Its $39 billion stake in the Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth — accounting for about 85 percent of the market value of Yahoo — has obscured both the weakness and the potential of the Silicon Valley stalwart. By spinning off the stake into a separate company, Yahoo will be judged by its core Internet businesses.
But there may not be much time for strategies and deals to turn those core businesses around. When the spinoff is complete, Yahoo may be more likely to become the hunted rather than the hunter, according to investors and analysts.
Moreover, Yahoo, which has long been considered one of the technology world’s biggest messes, burdened by years of mismanagement, has improved under the two-and-a-half-year tenure of Marissa Mayer as chief executive. What once was a mishmash of businesses has become, in some analysts’ eyes, a more focused company with a clearer vision of its future.
“I used to be very bearish on the prospects of what they could possibly do,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Securities. “Today, while I’m not fully convinced that the turnaround can succeed, I’m more impressed than I was even six months ago.”
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“The reality is that we are fundamentally operating folks,” Ken Goldman, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “We love what we do.”
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